Watch unsuspecting creatures fall prey to a Venus flytrap in this gorgeous, time-lapse video

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Originally published at: Watch unsuspecting creatures fall prey to a Venus flytrap in this gorgeous, time-lapse video | Boing Boing

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I heard screaming.

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Edge of my seat with that snail, holy cow! It’s pretty big, though, and it has that hard shell. Wonder if the plant could still digest it, or if the snail had the strength to escape.

Funny how some other victims were able to escape, by chewing their way through.

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Venus flytraps are amazing. How did something like this evolve, its fascinating.

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Unsettling. I like it!

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A recent episode of the excellent “Monster Talk” podcast had an expert in carnivorous plants. Fascinating stuff:

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I think the broad outlines are reasonably understood. Venus flytraps are members of the sundew family; others have leaves that curl around prey and digest them, but much slower, relying on sticky hairs to do the trapping. Then hairs that trap insects are found in a number of plants as defense mechanisms…you can’t eat plants if you get caught when you land on one.

So presumably that’s how they started out, plants with hairs that kill insects to protect themselves. That gave access to a rich source of protein that gave an advantage to absorb, and then bit by bit the traps were refined, until the leaf itself was effective enough to dispense with the sticky droplets. The result really is impressive.

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